Ignoring the radio, Loring resumed pacing the laboratory, trying to get a grip on the rage threatening to consume him. He had risked so much only to discover that all he had to show for his efforts was a broken radio. Sure, there was a little heat in it, but nothing special. It was not the tuning device he desperately needed.

After all the planning, all the experiments, all the waiting, things were starting to go wrong. Chandler Chastain should have been dead; instead he was in a sort of unresponsive state. With luck he would not come out of it, but who knew how things would turn out? What if he regained the ability to communicate? How much would he remember? Would he be able to identify the person who had attacked him with the night gun?

The disaster was the Puppets’ fault. They had fucked up the entire operation. That was the problem with Puppets. They were, by nature, unstable and impulsive. Typical cult recruits. But it wasn’t as if he’d had a lot of options when it came to hiring muscle. He’d needed men with minimal talent, just enough to activate the weapons. Men who were hungry for more power. He’d needed men who would believe him when he promised to transform them into invincible psychic warriors armed with untraceable weapons. He needed people he could manipulate. That sort didn’t come equipped with the ability to think logically. There was a reason that within the paranormal community they were referred to as Puppets. So simple for a smart man to pull the strings.

Still, the four Puppets were all he had to work with. Well, there was Garraway, but he was just the money man and the window dressing needed to make the Riverview operation appear legitimate.

Loring went to the window and stood looking out at the high walls of the psychiatric hospital. Beyond lay nothing but vast stretches of forest and the cliffs above the Pacific Ocean. There was a small town a few miles away but the locals were not friendly. They had not been happy when they discovered that the old, abandoned mansion had been converted into a private asylum. They kept their distance. That was fine by Loring. He wanted nothing to do with the people in town. He was here to fulfill his destiny.

He turned away from the window and contemplated his state-of-the-art lab. It was everything he had ever wanted. He had been determined to succeed where Crocker Rancourt had failed; where the entire Bluestone Project had failed. He had a talent for crystals and he was close to discovering the secret of weaponizing paranormal energy.

All he needed was Crocker Rancourt’s tuning crystal.

He forced himself to calm down. He was a scientist. He knew how to recover from disastrous experiments. It was time to go back to some of the original data. He had not looked at the logbook in months, because he had read it cover to cover and made copious notes when it first came into his hands. He had practically memorized the formulas and the math.